Climate Panel Faces Heat

Investigation Calls for 'Fundamental Reform' at U.N. Group on Global Warming

By

Jeffrey Ball

Updated Aug. 31, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

An independent investigation called for "fundamental reform" at the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying the organization's 2007 report played down uncertainty about some aspects of global warming.

The probe of the IPCC, a preeminent climate-science body that won the Nobel Peace Prize three years ago, was conducted by the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies. Leaders of the IPCC asked the council to conduct the probe following the disclosure of a few errors in its 2007 climate-science report, which concluded, among other things, that climate change is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by human activity.

ENLARGE

Nobel peace prize winner with his organization and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra Pachauri.
AFP/Getty Images

The investigation comes at a precarious time for the IPCC and for advocates of tough measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. For months, critics of such steps have cited the errors in the IPCC's 2007 report as reason to question the group's basic conclusion about climate change. As the InterAcademy Council's report notes, recent polls suggest the controversy over IPCC errors has caused public confidence in climate science to fall. Meanwhile, the recession has dimmed the enthusiasm of some politicians to push for major changes in energy production and consumption.

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Some critics, in the wake of the disclosure of the errors, called for IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri to resign. But Mr. Pachauri, who has said those errors were minor, said Monday that he hopes to serve until his term ends after the publication of the panel's next major climate-science study in 2014. "I was instrumental in requesting this review, and now that we've got it, I believe my responsibility is to take it forward," he said.

Partisans on both sides of the climate debate saw Monday's report as significant. Advocates of deep emission cuts said the investigation, and the reforms it suggested, should boost public confidence in the IPCC's assertions about the dangers of allowing greenhouse-gas emissions to increase. Critics said the investigation underscored problems with the way the IPCC assesses climate science. They said the agency ignored scientific nuances and dismissed minority viewpoints in its 2007 report.

The investigation will likely factor into the next U.N. climate conference in Cancún, Mexico, in December, when governments will try to come up with a global agreement to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. A similar conference last year in Copenhagen failed to come up with a major agreement.

ENLARGE

Chairman of a committee to review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Harold Shapiro
Associated Press

Harold Shapiro, the economist and former Princeton University president who led the InterAcademy Council's review, said in a press conference announcing the report that the IPCC "has been a success and has served society well."

In addition to raising questions about the procedures the IPCC used in coming up with its conclusions, the report was critical of the organization's management. It recommended that the IPCC chairman and other top leaders each serve only one six-year term, and that the IPCC institute a conflict-of-interest policy for its top leaders. This was partly a response to criticism that during his tenure, Mr. Pachauri has served as an adviser to energy and financial companies. These companies, said critics, could be affected by energy policies that rested in part on the IPCC's scientific pronouncements.

Mr. Pachauri, in an interview, said he supports the investigation's call for a conflict-of-interest policy and for clearer explanations about areas in which climate science is uncertain. He said the IPCC already has begun work on some of those changes and would consider further action when it holds a major meeting in October in Korea. Mr. Pachauri said his work on corporate boards doesn't interfere with his position as IPCC chair, adding that he has given all proceeds from that work to an energy think tank he heads and to charity.

Mr. Pachauri stressed that neither the InterAcademy Council report nor several other climate-science investigations that have been conducted in recent months have questioned the IPCC's conclusion about the existence of climate change or its likely human cause. Claims to the contrary amount to "gross distortions and ideologically driven posturing," he said. Taken together, the investigations should "strengthen public trust so that we can move forward," Mr. Pachauri said. "Science has confirmed that climate change is real."

Critics of the IPCC said the report validated many of their concerns.

"If these recommendations are followed to the letter and spirit, I think the IPCC could indeed be improved," said John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who was consulted by the InterAcademy Council for its review. Mr. Christy participated in the writing of two IPCC reports and said his doubts about evidence of man-made global warming were largely pushed aside both times.

One U.S. company played down the investigative report's importance, saying the political debate over climate change had moved beyond the question of what's causing it to the question of what to do about it.

"We're kind of beyond the science," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp., a Charlotte, N.C.-based power company that is one of the country's major greenhouse-gas emitters. "What we're after are the rules of the road," he said, explaining that Duke believes U.S. limits on greenhouse-gas emissions are inevitable and wants to shape the rules to the advantage of its customers.

The IPCC, created by the United Nations in 1988, is a sprawling organization. Thousands of scientists and other experts around the world volunteer their time to help write its massive reports approximately every six years that assess what's known and what isn't about the causes and effects of climate change. Its reports influence government policies on energy and the environment around the world.

The InterAcademy Council investigation, like several other investigations into climate science in recent months, didn't question whether human activity is causing global warming. Instead, it focused on the IPCC's process for forming conclusions, including one that projected Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The investigation noted that some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges "were not adequately considered," the InterAcademy Council's investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report.

Mr. Shapiro said the IPCC needs to tighten many of its procedures and its enforcement of the rules already on its books, given that climate change is such a hotly debated topic and that the IPCC's reports influence environmental policy world-wide.

A particular problem in the 2007 report was that it didn't consistently reflect uncertainty in some aspects of climate change, the investigation found.

Although the IPCC has guidelines in place for measuring uncertainty, those rules were "not consistently followed" in the 2007 report, "leading to unnecessary errors," the investigation said.

For instance, the investigation noted, the 2007 IPCC report said it had "high confidence" that climate change could halve the output of rain-fed agriculture in Africa by 2020.

But a fuller explanation about how the IPCC came up with that "high confidence," the investigation said, "would have made clear the weak evidentiary basis" for that statement. The InterAcademy Council panel recommended that IPCC reports assign specific probabilities to projections "only when there is sufficient evidence" to justify them.

The InterAcademy Council also faulted the IPCC for failing to stress in its 2007 report when some claims were based on literature that hadn't undergone the scientific process of peer-review. The IPCC should impose tougher guidelines to make sure non-peer-reviewed information is clearly "flagged," it said.

The investigation also said the IPCC sometimes failed to adequately reflect "properly documented" views of scientists who disagreed with the consensus conclusions.

IPCC leaders say they have already begun discussing how to better characterize uncertainty and to be more transparent about whether information has been peer-reviewed.

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